Posts Tagged ‘poop’

I know you don’t know what I look like, but I was the one hanging out in the boot/trunk of her enormous car with her kids today. In a public carpark. Yeah, let’s just say it’s a good thing I never bothered to take out the potty that was in the back from when they were learning to potty last summer.

Yeah, simple wees. There was a handy drain near the car, so I could pour it down and be sort of respectable, as opposed to being forced to water plants.

Then a kid did a giant soft serve crap. It looked soft enough to go down the drain. I was wrong. It sat there on the metal grating, a cheerful chocolate whirly perfect shit.

I had to run to the car, grab a baby wipe, and then come break the shit into pieces and shove it down the drain.

I think I looked suspicious.

Which is why I think you would have noticed me, had you been there. Don’t be shy. Say hi next time.

Yesterday almost broke me. Seriously, how did I ever have the energy to deal with two newborns? We had six poop accidents and one wee accident, of all things. But yesterday is done, onward to today. The poop child has pooped today, ON THE TOILET. So hopefully they are cleared out enough that things are back under control. This also makes three days in a row with poop. Not sure that has ever happened, even when this child was a newborn.

For those that have contacted me asking why they are on stool softeners, this child is what they call a poop withholder. Basically, they stop themselves from pooping. They’ve done it since they were born. As a toddler, we actually thought they were in a pain and really trying to poop, until I bought a book called something like Constipation, Withholding, and your Child. Yes. A scintillating title.

But this little book is pretty awesome. Through it I learned that this child’s behaviours that we thought were aborted, stressful poop attempts were actually this toddler doing everything in their power to hold the poop in. Standing rigidly, clutching furniture, not peeing, making pooping noises, even screaming. Withholding often can feature soiling, which is when new, liquid poop moves around the larger poop obstruction and leaks out to go into the nappy/underwear. We’ve only had this twice, but pretty massively this last episode.

This whole thing can lead to poops which hurt the bottom, or even tear it, because the poops can be huge and not soft. Then the pain leads to even more withholding. It’s a vicious cycle.

Off we trundled to the doctor about nine or ten months ago, and tried a laxative. It gave my kid tummy pain. So we moved on to stool softeners. They have managed it well, but even with them my child only pooped every other day at most. This may be normal for some children, and for this kid, it was as good as it has ever been. We actually stopped medication. Then in November, a particularly painful, huge poop ripped them and their fear of poop related pain meant we started medication again.

We are now trying two sachets of medication a day, which is more than my child has ever had. Their colon needs a chance to shrink down, and also learn to get poop signals when there is a lot less poop in there.

This morning we had a combo poop and wee (normal for most, but such is the control of this kid that they often poop first, then wee twenty minutes later once they are relaxed and not holding poop in) and IT WENT IN THE TOILET. Thank god for small, brown, murky miracles.

This hopefully concludes this bout of poop posts. If anyone has questions about withholding or recognises their child in my descriptions, feel free to get in touch.

You know how when someone gets murdered by gun, they can analyse the blood spatters to learn more about, say, the angle of the shot, etc?

I just wrote the ‘the angle of the shit’ instead of ‘shot,’ but it wasn’t too much of a mistake. I’m wrestling with whether I can post horrific shit pictures on my blog. Can I? Because I took the picture to show TMD because if one studies it carefully, one can only assume one of my children is in possession of roughly five distinct assholes.

Let’s just say that the three stool softener doses of yesterday (higher dose than usual), and perhaps the suppository of lubricant goodness, combined with not crapping for five days prior, means that the shit explosions are just…..oozing, spattering, and smearing everywhere. We have gone through three pairs of underpants, infinite wipes (disposable, because our lovely cloth wipes are too few in number when each accident takes roughly 500 wipes), and half a pack of antiseptic wipes. We have only been awake three and a half hours.

The child in question says the poop is catching them by surprise. This child does not have experience with poop this soft, or pooping this often, and I think their bowel, body, and brain are going to need some time to get used to it. In the meantime, I’m going to go out on a limb and say I’m limiting things to two sachets of stool softener a day….otherwise we may never leave the house again. This must be what people who do traditional potty training experience. I have to say, we never did it with either kid and never had any poop accidents, ever, or pee accidents beyond the first two days. So I am sort of in shock.

The only positive is that the last horrific episode, while also destroying underpants, also concluded in the bathroom. So at least the child recognised the poop was coming out this time and ran for the bathroom. Of course, taking off your underpants while they are filled with gooey shit is an art that this kid has never had the opportunity to learn. So in addition to the amazing toilet picture I took and probably won’t post, my brain is forever branded with the images of soft poop spatters on every conceivable surface, both flesh and not.

Yum.

By the way, I may sound like I am complaining, but in a sick way I’m sort of enjoying myself.

I’m totally not proud, in any way, of what happened today in the Burger King bathroom. Why I need to write about it, therefore, defies all logic.

Here’s the dealio: I have not been able to have a satisfying poop in ages.

Burger King is my laxative. Immediately after finishing lunch, I ran to the bathroom. I chose the stall (one of two) which I knew had a functioning lock. There were a few drops of pee on the seat, and I had no time to think.

I decided to have my emergency bowel clean-out while squatting. It went alright; I could even watch and see how things were progressing.

At one point, however, a spectacular burst of air shot a large quantity of slightly soft poop everywhere, including the toilet seat.

I realized that perhaps I should be sitting down, but I didn’t want to sit on fecal matter, so I pulled my jeans and underwear up to my knees and pulled my sweatshirt down, making sure not to get poop on it. I ran sideways, ass to the front of the stalls, to the next stall.

The seat was HORRIFIC. It looked like someone had:

1) Unwound an entire roll of toilet paper around and around the seat

2) Promptly peed all over all the unrolled paper, hence making it a yellow soup

3) Taken a fork and scratched at it, creating a monstrous papier mache piss sculpture.

(I don’t know who I am to judge since I pooped all over a seat, but then that’s what I do: judge.)

I swore, ran back to the other bathroom, and decided I had to keep squeezing the poop in while I cleaned the pee off the seat.

You have to understand that the pee on the seat which made me squat in the first place was only about 3 drops, yet while having my poop-coming-out-as-fast-as-diarhea-thon, I managed to also urinate all over the seat.

I took some toilet paper and starting swiping at the pee; the paper was some sort of mutant paper which did not absorb pee. It only spread it around. I threw the damp paper into the toilet and got a BIG handful of paper. While smearing the pee around, mixing my urine with the three drops that had originally been there, I started heaving.

I promptly vomited a tidy ball of onion rings and veggie burger into the toilet. I somehow didn’t vomit on the seat, which I eventually cleaned off. I lined it with toilet paper (yes, an effective barrier method to prevent disease transmision, I’m sure), sat down, and prepared to enter the 7th circle of Heaven.

Nothing came out. Nothing. Eventually I felt something worming out, and it was coming really slow, so I did that thing where you close your eyes and suck it back into your body.

I think as I was desperately wiping my ass again and again, I lost my sanity, as I started shaking and laughing. I couldn’t stop laughing.

Could. Not. Stop.

When the whole fiasco was done, I ran my hands for two seconds under cold water (again, a very healthy way to wash toilet germs from your hands, particularly after you’ve touched someone else’s piss), opened the door to the eating area, and started choking on laughter.

I walked very quickly to TMD, sat down, and started whispering…saying, ‘If you love me, TMD, swear to me you WILL NOT go into that bathroom.’

I started to whisper the story to her, but then a nice looking professional woman started heading towards the bathroom. TMD gave me The Look, and we rushed into our winter clothing and ran out of Burger King before the nice looking lady could come over to our table and demand to know what in the HELL I had done in the bathroom to leave it looking like it did.

I finished telling TMD the poop/vomit story while at the bus stop.

Then, on an unrelated note, I danced exhuberantly to ‘Jump…jump..for my love’ (80s song I can’t remember the real name to) while in the grocery store.

TMD was more embarassed of me dancing with bags of carrots and broccoli than knowing I lost control of my bowels, along with all other bodily functions, in a public bathroom.

I love that gal.

Jess says: I have one question & one question only. Do you, Existere, remember the Burger King poo experience like it was just yesterday? Um, I certainly do. To a point. I DEFINATELY remember your reaction to reading it in my blog!!

This post brought to you by my compelling desire to write, and complete inability to do so. Generous people have given me funny, thoughful, and factual suggestions for posts. Click here to see them, or add your own. I’ll work through them all in time.

Mother, I appeared to have sullied my nappy with crap. Can you please change me, because the feeling is simply dreadful.

Sometimes it means:

Mother, I know you are changing my sibling’s nappy at the minute, but look! I’ve just found my nappy you just changed me out of. And look! There is poop in it. Poop, poop! I will open the nappy and accidentally dump the poop onto our cream carpet and then get distressed.

Coconut is very aware of The Poop. Once it registers with her that she has to go, she will inform me constantly until it actually happens. (Potty specific talk to be the subject of another entry.)

‘Poop.’ Pulls at nappy or points at butt. ‘Poop. Poop. Poop.’ This continues for anything from 20 minutes to 2 hours.

Once she actually does poop, all hell breaks loose. We’re talking full on screaming, ‘POOP’ while sobbing and yanking at her nappy. She gets into a mini rage and jumps up and down (a life skill feces taught her, not her non-athletic mums) while continuing to miserably scream, ‘POOOOOOOOOOP.’

Today in the park she fell into some bad mud while holding Bunny. Bunny got some mud on and near his/her tail, which about drove her to distraction. (Worse than the ten foot fall down fucking concrete as the woman accompanying us didn’t think to hang on to her at the top of a large slide/hill/concrete mountain.)

She examined Bunny’s tail and then looked up, distress written on every feature. ‘Poop!’ she said miserably, gesturing at Bunny’s ass. ‘Poop.’ She began to sob. I had to explain it was mud, make a big deal of wiping the mud off Bunny, and say it was not poop.

This was repeated the entire remainder of the time we were at the park. She’s the fucking poop patrol.

On a sidenote, her lovely mama sat on the ‘grown-up potty’ when she got home, where Coco immediately tried to push my ass aside and see if I was pooping. Nice.

Now, genuine question. Bunny is so dirty and stained. I am afraid to vigourously surface wash as I don’t want to ruin it in some way. TMD says we should not put it in the washing machine as it will get soaked through and you aren’t supposed to get these sorts of toys wet on the inside – but with a good ‘surface’ wash, Bunny is sodden anyway.

How do I clean her? How do I get the ‘poop’ off Bunny, people?!? This is not just an idle question.

I think there’s not a single soul in the world who doesn’t know about the fact that one of my children pooped on my vagina yesterday. If you don’t know it, please read the previous entry. You won’t regret it. Well, maybe you will if you don’t like poop talk – but if you don’t like that, then why are you reading my blog?

The afternoon was rounded off nicely by another shit explosion. I didn’t realise until both kids were sitting at the table and I was bringing dinner out that, uh, ‘Batgirl’ had shat through her nappy, vest, trousers, and a coating of slimey poo was on her chair. Also that Snort crapped two seconds later, and….well, you know, he also sliced his chin open while falling. And she sliced her forehead open AND managed to hit herself on a wooden toy right on her eyebrow line, so her eyebrow appeared to be bright red and jutting out from her face in a monstrous sort of way.

Just a typical day.

But you know what ELSE happened? Coconut said ‘bye bye’!!!

Aside from ‘Mama,’ which she has been saying meaningfully for months now, it’s the only word she has said repeated times (that we understand, anyway, she is really taken saying ‘ba’, whatever the hell that is.) and obviously understands.

She said ‘bye bye’ and then waved her hand. I ran into the room. I said I was leaving, said bye bye, and her little voice rang out clear as a bell.

‘Bye bye!’ More waving.

I made her say it for the camera this morning, which was tricky as nothing was actually going bye bye, but she obviously decided to just humour me. I’ll maybe post that here. Because I know you are literally hanging on my kids’ every word, no?

BYE BYE!!

Oh, the other thing that happened yesterday?

Snort woke up about 1:30 am in order to puke. According to TMD, he puked just like the lady in Little Britain, if you get that reference. If not, he puked like a scene from the Exorcist. We’re talking all over himself, all over TMD (who, sadly, was not naked – wouldn’t that have bookended the day nicely?), all over TMD’s bed, blankets, and the floor.

Apparently there is a gastrointestinal thing going around. Apparently my kids have it. Nice to think that while one is getting sick out the bottom, the other is getting sick out the top. It makes things lively.

Someone suggested I just sit them in an empty plastic paddling pool. Not a bad idea, not bad at all.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to try to make Snort walk or talk. I can’t believe Coconut has started walking this week, and getting more confident every day, and now she’s learned a new word!

Snort is catching on to all her party tricks, like holding things to his ear like a phone when I say, ‘Hello!’ Coco has started responding by saying ‘hello’ the way Scooby Doo might, so we don’t count it as a word.

All y’all who think your kid is all mega advanced and saying ‘dada,’ oh, the youthful naivety. Our kids both ‘said’ dada around 4 months maybe? Snort even progressed to ‘dad’ quite nicely. As our Health Visitor said, most babies begin babbling by saying ‘dada’, and our house was proof that it was meaningless babble!! She said she lets people keep their illusions, though.

I think we have swung the other way. Your words don’t count till you demonstrate clear understanding, excellent pronunciation, can spell them backwards, etc. It helps if they can also fingerspell them in sign language and paint them on the walls in their own snot.

We have standards, people.

It’s funny. I think Snort beat Coconut to every major milestone by a few days (or weeks, in the case of crawling!), but in walking and talking she has reclaimed her own. I’m not too surprised. She’s wanted to be upright since she was tiny, and wanting to be walking for months now. She is also a very, very sociable baby – so I was starting to wonder where her words were.

I hope I remember what a miracle it is to hear her little voice sing-songing ‘bye bye’, and the wonder of her beginning to add words to her communication.

The temptation with twins is to compare the babies, but we try to resist it because every baby develops on their own timeline, at the speed right for them. While Coco spends all her time on her feet, Snort is busy zooming around and getting into crawlspaces that are only accessible to a baby on their knees. He’s no fool.

You want to get at the used tissues that missed the can in the corner? Crawl under the table and squeeze yourself round the corner to where The Mamas thought you could not get. Want to pick up old food from the floor and have yourself a snack? That shit ain’t happening if you’re walking – hell, you’re too tall to walk under the table.

He cruises when it suits him – grabbing things off the table, kissing the television, making his way stealthily to where I’ve stashed power cords on the corner of the couch. He can now get himself onto the couch, onto the low table – onto anything that requires climbing, actually. He’s waving, doing some serious talking (in his own language, but it’s very expressive – voice going up and down, stressing some ‘words,’ etc), walking like a champion with a walker or while holding on, and actually RUNNING on his hands and knees. He fucking canters, man.

He does not like his nose being wiped.

Coconut is a mama’s girl. She wants to be held a lot of the time, and when she isn’t stopping by for a cuddle she’s off exploring. Mostly on her feet, though hanging onto things a lot of the time still. Our floor is so cluttered with crap that both kids will be skilled walkers by virtue of the fact that they are fighting for floor space while holding their balance and moving forward!

Coconut loves her Bunny. She smiles at everyone she sees, sometimes waving. She likes to feed the babydoll, and she loves cars and trains.

Both kids seem to like reading over everything else. They are constantly holding up books to me. Coconut uses a very insistent little voice to demand to be read to. She’s starting to really interact with the books, and if you give her instructions like ‘put the blanket on Elmo’s head’ (surely a reasonable request) she’ll do it.

SHE LOVES DANCING. She sang before she talked. Hell, right now she’s dancing and singing and smiling at Snort. He’s blasting his way through their two beanbag chairs to stand up by The Allergy Couch and, presumably, look for used tissues or electricity.

So, we spend a lot of time reading (I make up my own stories to the pictures and find myself hilarious), having dance parties (Snort does an awesome headbang), and sleeping. We’re down to one long nap a day, and bizarrely during these past few sick days, they’ve slept for like 3 hours right after breakfast. *shrug*

Congrats if you’ve made it…

HA!!!

Coconut loves shaking her head back and forth. It makes her crap herself in glee. Snort’s doing it right now!!! He’s shaking his head wildly back and forth and laughing, and Coconut is SO HAPPY she may explode.

I just shook my head while making crazy jungle sounds, and they both ran at me. I had a kid at each knee, wildly shaking their heads back and forth and beaming.